LATVIA: „Rudzu ceļš” ("Rye Road")

The Rye Road invites you to visit rural entrepreneurs who make rye bread, using traditional or family recipes perfected from generation to generation, make various dishes from rye bread or rye flour and serve them to their guests. The owners demonstrate the bread-making process to the visitors, allow them to attempt to make their very own loaf of bread, offer healthy and delicious rye grain dishes, drinks that retain the strength of the rye grain, and tell them about the traditions regarding rye and bread.

The initiative of the Rye Road belongs to farm "Bērziņi", country house "Caunītes", Vineta Cipe in Āraiši Mill, farms "Buliņi" and "Klajumi", Aina Barsukova from bakery "Dzīles", which have merged within the framework of the Rural Support Service Republic of Latvia project "Culinary tourism product "Rye Road".

The Rye Road now includes many new farms that are open to visitors and demonstrate the bread-making process, allowing them to make their very own loaf of bread, offering cereal porridges and other healthy and delicious dishes and drinks made from the powerful rye grains, as well as telling them about the traditions regarding rye and bread. This is the story of the rye grain – the carrier of Latvian identity since ancient times. Nowadays, we are aware of many of the valuable properties of rye, which inspires us to increase consumption of it both by trying out old and creating new recipes, from porridge and pancakes to gingerbread biscuits and sprouted grains. We still bake rye bread according to our ancestors' traditions, because we love its authentic flavour and it gives us strength. We take it with us on the road and as a gift when we visit someone. Latvians put bread on the table at every meal and it is an indispensable addition to soup. In pubs, bread is usually served with the main dish without ordering it. In finer pubs and guest houses, bread is often home-baked.